from the how-it's-done dept

DRM, or digital rights management, can be said to have been effective in practice at accomplishing many different things. It makes products less useful, for instance. It also serves as chaff to distract the technically proficient into disabling it instead of doing any number of actually useful things. DRM is also actually quite good at making our lives just a bit less safe. What's interesting is that none of those things are the stated reason companies use DRM. Instead, DRM is explained by companies as the only way they can protect themselves from damned dirty pirates and, without it, these companies would simply not be able to make enough money to sustain themselves.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has proven to be incredibly successful for CD Projekt RED, having sold a whopping six million copies within its first six weeks on store shelves. According to CD Projekt's latest financial results (via NeoGAF), the company earned 237 million PLN ($63.3 million USD) in net profit for the first half of 2015. The publisher also noted its open-world RPG has performed well both at retail and digitally.

Yes, a game publisher, one which released its game both in retail and in the scary, scary digital realm, has spent six weeks selling an insane amount of copies of its latest game. But how is this possible? After all, CD Projekt RED long ago promised that the game would be shipped completely sans DRM. On top of that, the company also made every last tiny drop of DLC for the game...completely free. In other words, CD Projekt RED decided bucking one modern trend in gaming was too easy so it decided to go for an exacta. Were the theory that lies behind every other instance of DRM in gaming existence to be true, the game should have been a failure everywhere other than on dastardly pirate sites. Instead, the game sold six million copies in six weeks. How is this possible?

It's actually quite simple: CD Projekt RED made a fantastic and well-reviewed game, didn't hamper customers with annoying DRM or pushy microtransactions, and then went about its victory lap with about as classy and gracious an open-letter from its studio head that I can remember seeing.

One could think we have six million reasons to be happy and that’s it. We do, but that number is also a big responsibility and I want everyone to know that we, as a studio, realize that. For us, all your high praise, all the positive reviews, are also an obligation -- we’ve made a really good game but there’s still a long road ahead of us. Everyone here in CD PROJEKT RED is really attached to their work and how you, the gamers, perceive it. RED is full of artists, wild dreamers and people crazy about what they do (and sometimes just plain crazy). We lose sleep over that particular colour the sun has when it sets over Velen, and argue over arranging the furniture in a house the majority of gamers will probably never see. We’re not the kind of people who are easily satisfied and we always strive for more. I’d like you to know that.

Yes, six million copies is a great achievement for a company making RPGs, but this business is not only about that. If our games are a gallery of sound, picture and text - you are the visitors of this gallery. To an artist, there’s no sweeter sight than people enjoying their work. That’s why, in the name of all the devs in the studio, I’d like to say thanks to each and every one of you.

Thanks!

Adam Badowski, Head of Studio CD PROJEKT RED

This is how CwF+RtB is done. In fact, the studio has always had a reputation for being open and awesome to its customers. The release of this game, the lack of DRM, the free DLC, and the gracious attitude is merely a continuation of a culture that fans and gamers are naturally going to gravitate towards. And so they buy. Of course they buy. That they buy isn't the surprise. Instead, the surprise is how difficult to understand this all apparently is for the other gaming studios still traveling a different road.

from the +1-broad-sword-of-awesomeness dept

If you need an example of a game developer doing something (well, a lot of things) right, look no further than CD Projekt Red and their latest multi-platform role-playing game, Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. The developers are aggressively breaking all of the usual obnoxious video game industry norms: they're releasing most of the title's downloadable content (DLC) for free (two each week), they've avoided annoying pre-order exclusives, they're receptive to fan feedback, and perhaps most importantly to many gamers, they've taken a repeated, strong and vocal position against DRM.

"Sales of the third part will be many times higher than with our earlier games. Preorders indicate this," CD Projekt's chief executive Adam Kicinski said in an interview. "We broke into the mainstream. It is such a moment in our firm's history that after some years people will look differently at CD Projekt before and after this release." DM BO Brokerage analyst Tomasz Rodak said he saw the new Witcher's yearly sales at 7 million copies, which could bring a record net profit of 369 million zlotys ($97.5 million) in 2015.

And again, they've done it without resorting to the obnoxious, nickel and dime tactics so many game companies have an unholy addiction to.

It's also worth noting the game itself is really, really good. I was one of the few avid RPG fans that found the first two titles to enjoyable but relatively clunky affairs. I'm a sucker for open-world games however, and with the shift of the series to a truly open world, I've been absolutely blown away not only by the sheer size of the game world, but by how fleshed out the storytelling is for a lot of the side quests. It's a fully inhabitable fantasy-nerd paradise. While the writing still stumbles around the usual stale fantasy gender tropes (which scantily-clad sorceress shall I seduce next?), overall it's an incredible accomplishment.

The company's also showing it has a sense of humor. Long critical of DRM, CD Projekt Red's not only not using DRM for the title, it has found marginally-entertaining ways to mock DRM in game. From a grimoire on "Defensive Regulatory Magicon" found by one user while they were busy exploring:

The game does have an atrocious, headache-inducing font problem the company's planning to patch, so here's the text:

"The Defensive Regulatory Magicon (or DRM for short) belongs to the above-mentioned group of the longest-lasting, most effective and hardest to break defensive mechanisms. In order to recognize the individual administering it, it makes use of a portal mounted at the entrance of the area it is to defend. This portal passes streams of magical energy through the body of the person entering and can, in the blink of an eye, determine if this person has the corporeal signature (eyeball structure included) of the entitled administrator. As a result, the only unauthorized individuals that can possibly hope to enter are mimics.

DRM thus makes for an extremely effective and near-unbreakable security measure - but you are in luck, for you hold in your hands the key to bypassing it, namely the present tome, Gottfried’s Omni-opening Grimore, or GOG for short. In the pages to follow you will find innumerable methods for deactivating DRM, or, even better, bypassing it altogether (…)"

A Bill Hicks level joke it ain't (GOG is also short for DRM-free games outlet Good Old Games, run by CD Projekt), but the full quest is notably more amusing, with said "DRM" trapping the owner of the magic technology in a tower after failing to recognize him. Not only is CD Projekt Red doing everything right in regards to DLC and DRM, it's doing it with a little flair. Offer a great product, treat your customers well, don't obnoxiously nickel and dime people like it's going out of style, and customers respond positively. Who the hell knew?

from the bait-and-switch dept

Pay attention to the gaming scene and the way gamers interact with game companies and journalists and you'll see that times are a little tense these days. Without diving into any of the debates currently being had throughout Gamerdom (Gamerstan? Gaming Nation?), let's just all agree that there is a big fat trust vacuum at the moment and that this vacuum is being filled by all kinds of reactions, some of which are reasonable, some of which are silly and overreaching. What's happened since in the last year or so has exacerbated the distrust to the point where companies operate on tip-toes with their audiences or they suffer the consequences. What cannot be done in a time like this, if a company wants to make money and keep its fanbase loyal, is to further breach that trust.

Today, the Xbox YouTube channel released a rad new video for the upcoming role-playing game The Witcher 3. There’s just one problem: it’s not actually running on an Xbox. Whoops. Yep, despite that XBOX logo stamped on the bottom right corner of the above video, this is actually footage from the (presumably better-looking) PC version of the game. The easiest way to tell? You can run the YouTube video at 60 frames-per-second; the developers of The Witcher 3 (out May 19 for PS4/XB1/PC) have specified that the console versions are actually locked at 30 FPS.

Now, I can already hear every person on the planet who either isn't a gamer at all or is a casual gamer at most screaming, "There's no way this is a big deal!" And, ultimately, they're right, it's not the hugest issue in gaming today. Game-makers play these kinds of tricks all the time, whether it's showing the wrong version of the game, passing off cut-scenes as gameplay elements, or promoting features in games that aren't present upon release. But the tolerance for these tricks is completely gone. It's now common to see disclaimers that footage isn't actually of gameplay, or that the footage is from one version of the game or another. And, while the Xbox channel did eventually edit to include a disclaimer that the footage was from the PC version of the game, the bait-and-switch nature of all this seems more inexplicable when it appears on the YouTube page for the console itself.

Next thing you know, prospective customers are crying foul and the game developer, CD Projeck Red, a company that is generally awesome in terms of being customer friendly, suddenly has to scramble to assure its fans that it had no idea Microsoft was doing any of this. Again, no reason not to believe them, but in the trust vacuum everyone might be in on the conspiracy and blowback is done via carpet-bomb instead of in a measured way.

Is this false advertising or an inadvertent error? I have no idea, but I do know that gaming companies can't make these errors and think they can get away with it at the moment.

from the doing-it-right dept

We've written about the CD Projekt team in the past, typically concerning something awesome it's done with one of its games. Often times this means bucking the trend on DRM in game after game, even as competitors insist that DRM is necessary. Even when the company has gone down the road of going after infringers, it has quickly reversed course in listening to fans. Most recently, CD Projekt is looking to buck the DLC trend that has so many gamers annoyed these days. It's not that Witcher 3 won't have DLC. It totally will, except that the DLC is going to be completely free and available to anyone for simply purchasing the game.

As CD PROJEKT RED, we strongly believe this is not the way it should work and, with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we have decided to do it differently. Cutting to the chase, everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform. You don’t have to pre-order, you don’t have to buy any special edition to get them -- if you own a copy of Wild Hunt, they’re yours. This is our way of saying thank you for buying our game.”

What a shock, rather than taking the avenue of other game companies, such as Ubisoft and EA, CD Projekt treats their customers well, behaving in an awesome and human way and even connecting with gamers with a shared experience, and success is had. They listen, in other words, rather than simply try to dictate. As part of this announcement, the company is insisting that there will be no restrictions on getting the DLC. They even have a long Q&A below the blog post to reiterate that point.

Is this something of a gimmick? Undoubtedly. After all, the company could simply wait until all this DLC content is finished and include it in the final product. On the other hand, their competitors could do the same and include all the DLC they put out for free or raise the pricing of the game. The message CD Projekt is conveying is that it isn't going to attempt to nickle and dime its fans. Gimmick or not, it's a message that resonates in the days of paid DLC.

from the towards-all-PC-men dept

We've written about CD Projekt, the video game studio behind the Witcher series, several times in the past. The studio has a fan-friendly view on DRM, in that they have staunchly refused to include it in their games. They've stuck by this plan, even as the Witcher games are heavily pirated. Even when its lawyers got the best of it and began attempting to go after alleged pirates, CD Projekt eventually listened to its own community, fans and customers, and promptly calmed the hell down and put the lawyers back on their leashes. So, as you can imagine, the piracy continued unabated, resulting in so many lost sales and devastating the games' markets to the point that CD Projekt had no choice but to go the DRM route with the upcoming The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Nope, just kidding, the games were wildly successful despite the horrors of mega-piracy and CD Projekt is going out of its way to reaffirm its stance on DRM. In an open letter to its community, it promises no DRM on PC versions of the game, and in a way that is as endearing as it is forthright.

I’d like to say it loud and clear: The PC version of The Witcher 3 will have absolutely no DRM from day 0. Zero. Zip. Nada. It doesn’t matter if you choose to buy it on GOG.com and support us directly or buy the game in box format, you’ll still get the 100% DRM-free experience. And this goes for the whole world. We’ve fiddled with DRM in the past (Oh boy! How young and naïve we were;)) and that’s enough. Lesson learned. Having said that, I’d like to thank you for your continuous support. You’ve bought six million copies of the Witcher games so far. Whoo-hoo! Let’s celebrate. Here, have some cake!

The post goes on to note that the game will be made available on Steam, which lots of people like to blindly label DRM in the same vein as an Ubisoft platform (which is stupid), but notes that there are lots of other places to buy the game that follow CD Projekt's stance on DRM.

When it comes to engaging with your community, being awesome, and giving them a reason to love you and to buy your goods, this project is full win. Electronic Arts, you should be taking notes.